Summary of Love Song from the Amharic

The speaker addresses the beloved and says that she is the lime (a tree with smooth heart-shaped leaves and fragrant yellow flowers) of the forest. She is honey among the rocks. She is the lemon of the cloister. She is grape in the savannah (treeless grassy plain in tropical and subtropical regions). Her hip is, so small that, it can he enclosed by one hand.

Her thigh is round like a piston (cylinder or tube). Her back is like a manuscript to read hymns from. Her eye is so attacking some that it can shoot even heroes. Her gown is a cobweb (line network of threads made by a spider) which is very tender. Her skirt is like a soothing balm. She doesn't bath with a soap, but in Arabian scent. Her calf (fleshy back part of the leg below the knee) is colored in silvery lines.

The speaker exclaims with fear and wonder that he can not dare to touch her. He can hardly dare to look back. She is mistress of his body (The Bible says that woman was made out of bones and flesh of man). She is more precious to him than his hand or his foot. She is, more precious like the fruit of the valley and the water of paradise. She is more precious to him like the flower of the night, which is wrought by divine craftsmen. She stepped on his heart with his muscular thigh while walking her eternal heel trod him down, but she has no compassion with him. Her breast resembles the finest gold. When she opens her heart, he exclaims with a wonder that he can see there "The Saviour, image", and Jerusalem, a sacred city, shouts "holy holy" at the sight of the image.

In the poem, the speaker is a lover who addresses his beloved with a series of similes/metaphors. He tries to find suitable expressions to express what he feels about her. The poem is subjective because it is concerned with the externalization of private feelings and emotions. He wishes to draw an exact picture of his beloved by comparing her with different things. He shows his admiration, love and awe of the lady he loves. The poem develops with different comparisons. Each comparison becomes more desperate and exaggerated than the earlier ones. Finally the speaker (lover) shows his surrender or the abject dependence upon the lady for his survival. He sees in her “the Sariour image”the lady  assumes the spiritual dignity of the Jerusalem city where he wishes to make a holy pilgrimage. So the movement of the poem is from physical admiration to spiritual devotion. The lady is elevated in the speaker's ecstatic hyperboles.